accurate that the burly monk reeled beneath the blow, and his followers fled from the field. At length, in despair of succeeding by force, the king adopted an opposite policy, and bought off the hostility of Wimund by a grant of Furness in Westmoreland, where, for a short time, the bishop played the tyrant with impunity, particularly directing his virulence against the monastery in which he had passed his early days. At length the people of the neighbourhood, whose patience was worn out by his exactions, watching their opportunity, seized upon him at an unguarded moment, and the luckless Wimund, to whom no mercy was shown, was deprived of his see, and passed the remainder of his life, sightless and cruelly maimed, in the monastery of Biland. No sufferings, however, could subdue the reckless spirit of the man, who was wont to boast, with a laugh, that “even Providence could only conquer him by the faith of a foolish bishop;” adding, that if his enemies had only left him as much sight as a “sparrow’s eye,” he would have soon shown them how little cause they had for triumph.[260] The whole of the north of England beyond the Tees had now for several years been under the influence, if not under the direct authority, of the Scottish king, and the comparative prosperity of this part of the kingdom, contrasting strongly with the anarchy prevailing in every other quarter, naturally inclined the population of the northern counties to look with favour upon a continuance of the Scottish connection. All southward of the Tyne, indeed, was held probably in the name of the Empress Queen, but the influence of David extended far beyond the Tees, and when a claim was raised upon the Honour of Skipton in Craven, it was the Scottish, and not the English king who decided upon its validity. William Fitz Duncan was the claimant, the heir of Duncan the Second and the victor at Clitheroe, whose fiery courage broke off the conference before the battle upon Cutton Moor, and whose prominent position upon this and other occasions during the war, seems to mark him as the Gaelic Toshach. Like his father, however, he was more of a feudal than a Gaelic noble, and several years before this date he married, during the lifetime of Archbishop Thorstein, Alice de Rumeli, the heiress of her Norman name; three daughters and one son, whose fame yet lingers in local tradition as William of Egremont, being the issue of their union. It was in right of his wife that William raised his claim; [Sidenote: A. D. 1151.] and as it must have suited well with the policy of David to increase the feudal ties incidentally securing the fidelity of his nephew, he lost no time in installing him in the Honour, willingly providing him with the means of enforcing his rights (as some opposition appears to have been meditated), and atoning for the depredations of the more unruly portion of the army by the gift of a silver chalice wherever the property of